The Complete Aliens Omnibus, Volume 3

by Sandy Schofield

  “Be careful you don’t shoot one of our own,” she whispered and they all nodded and silently split up.

  Never had she felt so naked. Going into a firefight without a gun. That was stupid. A few steps into the tunnel she saw a rock the size of a grapefruit and picked it up. For some reason that made her feel better. A little stupid, but better.

  Then a thought hit her that sent her blood rushing to her head. What would they do if the shots were being fired at aliens? What the hell was she going to do? Toss a rock at an alien? She forced the thought from her mind and focused ahead.

  She clicked off her light again and with one hand resting lightly on Kent’s arm moved toward the faint light around a shallow corner in the tunnel.

  It seemed to take forever, but finally they had silently worked their way around the corner so they could at least see what was going on.

  Ahead, crouched down behind a small pile of rocks from a shallow cave-in, were two of Larson’s guards. They had their backs to Joyce and Kent and weren’t firing at the moment, although both of their guns were poised on the rocks pointing down the tunnel in front of them. Their light had been tossed out in front of them and pointed where they were aiming.

  Luckily for Joyce and Kent that at the moment no one was firing at the two. In this small space they were more likely to get hit by a ricochet from friendly fire than by shots from the two in front of them.

  Joyce regripped the rock a few times, getting the feel of it in her hand. Then in the faint light she nodded to Kent who silently knelt and raised his rifle.

  With as much force as she could she threw the rock overhand, imagining the two guys she aimed at were the two who had killed Jerry. She didn’t realize she could throw that hard, or had that much anger inside her.

  The rock seemed to take just a fraction of a second to cover the short distance. There wasn’t even a slight arch in its trajectory as it flew, striking squarely into the back of the man closest to the wall. The thump was loud in the small tunnel as the rock bounced up and caught the guy a glancing blow in the back of the head. The force of the blow pitched him forward and face-first into the rocks in front of him. His head bounced and he turned blank-eyed to Joyce and Kent, blood streaming from his forehead, as he slumped to a sitting position.

  The other man, caught by surprise, took a moment to react to his bleeding partner, then he spun to fire.

  Kent took him out with a single shot in the chest that sent him sprawling back over his buddy, blood spurting from his back like a pumping fountain, staining the rocks and dusty floor a dark black.

  The single shot sounded huge in the small tunnel and Joyce covered her ears far, far too late.

  “Sergeant? Hank?” Joyce shouted, her voice sounding odd in her ringing ears. “Don’t shoot.” She blinked her light twice in the signal they had set up. “We got two of them here.”

  “Nice work,” Sergeant Green said, a light appearing down the way. “I had my men working to flank them too.”

  Joyce watched as the sergeant approached. The guy she had hit wouldn’t be moving for some time to come. He wasn’t dead, but he was going to have one hell of a headache. She bent over the guy she had knocked out and pulled his rifle from his hands. She stripped him of his ammunition belt and slung it over her shoulder, then emptied his pockets of six concussion grenades and his flashlight.

  The sergeant stood over the two for a moment nodding. “Nice work. Two with one shot.”

  “A shot and a good right arm,” Kent said. “She should be pitching for the Yankees.”

  The sergeant, who was also unarmed, stripped the other rifle from the bloody hands of the dead man and checked to make sure it was ready to fire. Then, without seeming to notice the blood at all, took the guy’s ammunition belt, grenades, and light. Joyce smiled. Not only was the guy going to wake up with a headache and a dead partner on top of him, but in pitch-blackness and with no light. A true hell. Served the guy right.

  As Sergeant Green stood he slapped the stock of the gun and smiled. “Feels much better.”

  Joyce had to agree. Having that gun in her hands did feel much better.

  Much better indeed.

  * * *

  Sergeant Green’s and Joyce’s groups were the last to arrive at the old elevator shaft. Hank and Cray already had their groups climbing carefully up the old ladder and Sergeant Green went next, moving quickly and surely up the wooden ladder.

  Joyce waited until there were only three Marines left before she strapped the rifle over her shoulder and started up.

  The space was about four meters square and looked to have been some sort of freight elevator. Lights from the first people up had been left every ten meters, giving the place a weird glow.

  At first she had imagined aliens swarming down the shaft at her, but again she forced the thought out of her mind. If that happened, she and all the others were dead. No point in thinking about it. But the chill remained with her for the next few minutes, even though her hands were already so cold she could barely feel them.

  A dozen cables hung down the center of the elevator shaft and the wooden ladder was secured on old wooden beams up one side. Every few meters a horizontal beam gave the climber a larger step and Joyce took advantage of each of those beams. The wood of the ladder felt dry and very old, scraping her hands in the same places that they were already sore from climbing in the tunnels and vents.

  At one point she had to stop and clear out a splinter. But the entire way up, as Green had suggested, she kept her hands and feet away from the centers of the boards and never let her weight rest on only one spot at once.

  She seemed to climb forever in the faint light, focusing only on her foot- and handholds, going slow to save what little energy she had left. Finally, when it seemed like the climb would become her lifetime hell, a friendly hand reached in from above and helped her through.

  “You all right?” Hank whispered as he pulled her away from the elevator shaft and over against a wall so she’d have something to lean against while she caught her breath.

  She took a quick glance around. No sign of Sergeant Green and Robinsen, but the rest seemed to be in a tunnel that had been blocked off when the human section was built.

  “‘Tired, but alive,” she said. “You?”

  “About the same.” His smile was like a shot of energy. She’d been lucky meeting this guy. Danny had been dead for years. Now Jerry was gone, too. If both of them got out of this alive, maybe it was time for her to get on with living and family. Maybe the kids could handle a new dad. Maybe they could get used to a mother around, once in a while, too. The way he looked at her, she had a sneaking hunch she might just be able to talk him into it.

  She squeezed Hank’s hand. Then nodding at the wall to the human sector, she asked, “What’s happening?”

  “Sarge and Kent are scouting the armory, seeing what kind of…”

  Sarge ducked his head through a small open vent “Let’s move. Quick, through here.”

  Joyce slipped the rifle off her shoulder and followed Hank through the vent and into the well-lit and much warmer corridor. After spending so much time in the dark tunnels and ventilation shafts, standing again in the bright lights and carpeted corridor felt odd, exposed, almost naked. And very, very dirty. She immediately wanted to dust off her pants and vest, but refrained.

  Green motioned that they should follow him and at a run they swarmed down the empty corridor to where Robinsen crouched behind a corner.

  “Two of Larson’s goons,” he whispered. “Twenty meters. One standing on each side of the door to the armory. They look nervous, but I don’t think they’re worrying about us. They keep looking off toward the alien section to their right.”

  Green nodded and patted Robinsen on the shoulder. “You take the one on the right,” he whispered. “I got the left. The rest of you be ready to run for the door when we do. There might be more inside, but we won’t know that until we get there.”

  Robinsen nodded and c
licked his rifle to single shot.

  Joyce glanced down at hers, making sure it was set on fully automatic and the clip was full. She’d checked it three times already since taking it from the guard, but a fourth time never hurt.

  Green and Robinsen were right beside the corner. “On two,” Green whispered. “One.”

  “Two.”

  They both stepped calmly forward into the corridor, swung, and took aim as if this were a practiced move and they were only shooting at ducks in a carnival booth.

  They shot almost simultaneously, the concussion pounding Joyce’s head and starting the ringing in her ears again.

  Then both men started at a full run down the corridor toward the door of the armory as if the shots had been a starter’s gun at a track meet. Joyce was around the corner two steps behind Green with Hank at her side. Behind her she could hear the pounding steps of the others.

  Larson’s two guards were clearly dead. One had been slammed against the wall with the force of the shot and had left a red smear down the stone face. The other had twisted sideways and lay in a heap in front of the door, a hole the size of a baseball blown through the back of his bloodstained jacket.

  The door to the armory was locked but Robinsen made short work of it with a blast from his Kramer as two Marines scampered down the corridor toward the alien section to stand guard. Two others took up locations at the corner they had just come from. The more Joyce watched Green and his men work as a smoothly running machine, the more impressed she was. And damn glad to be on their side.

  The armory was a large gymnasium like room with two armored tanks sitting in the very center. “Holy shit!” Green said after checking to make sure no guards were in the room.

  Shelves and racks of guns, ammunition, grenades, and other such devices filled the walls and lined the center of the room around the tanks like shelves in a library. Joyce knew what a lot of the weapons were at first glance and had seen pictures of some of the others. But it was clear there was enough firepower in this one room to stage a pretty good-sized war.

  “Everyone keep your eyes open for the Sound Cannons,” Green ordered. “We might need them more than anything. Robinsen, take five men and get as many ammunition belts as you can carry. Run them back to the elevator shaft area.”

  Sergeant Green barked one quick order after another.

  Joyce stood to his right with Hank, marveling at how organized the sergeant was and how quickly he made decision after decision. Finally he turned to them. “There’s more ammunition over there. You also might want to grab a few pistols and stock your pockets with concussion grenades. As many as you can comfortably carry without slowing you down. Speed may turn out to be your most important weapon.”

  She nodded and as one she and Hank moved to the shelves the sergeant indicated. She took two more ammunition belts, their heavy weight a comfort over her shoulders. She already had six of the small apple-sized grenades in her vest and pants pockets, but she managed four more and a small black pistol with a fifteen-round clip fit perfectly down the back of her pants, held secure by her belt.

  Then, at a run and carrying three extra belts each, she and Hank scrambled out of the door and back down the hall toward the abandoned elevator shaft.

  It seemed like the entire raid had taken forever, but in reality from the first shot to ducking through the vent into the dark and cold of the tunnels, less than two minutes had expired.

  Now they were armed. What next?

  Find the Professor or the aliens?

  Or just make a run for the ships.

  So many ways to die, so few ways to live.

  * * *

  When the base was first being converted, the Professor had constructed three private tunnels known only to himself, Larson, and Grace. The three tunnels led from a hidden door in his inner office to the hangar deck, the center of the alien section, and the private lab. They were completely sealed and secure tunnels and at the moment the Professor was thanking himself for thinking ahead on this one thing.

  He and Grace had ducked into the tunnels and had taken the right branch into the alien sector at a full jog, with Grace in front. Both were in full protective armor and Grace carried a Kramer, three belts of ammunition, and a motion detector. He put his trust in the Sound Cannon in his hand. Why kill an alien when you can just stop it in its tracks?

  They reached the edge of the tunnel and Grace quickly scanned the area beyond the door with the motion detector. “Nothing,” she said.

  The Professor nodded and unsealed it, moving out onto a balcony that overlooked a huge room near the center of the alien sector.

  “Still nothing,” Grace said as they peered over the railing. The alien smell was intense, filling the Professor’s nose and making it hard to breathe.

  Under his boots he could feel the slime of the hive that had dripped off the ceiling and walls and ran across the floor.

  “Nothing moving at all down here,” Grace said. “No traces.”

  The Professor scanned the large room, then pointed at a large arch on the far wall. “Through there is the queen.” He led the way to a stone ladder and they made their way down and across the room, moving as slowly and silently as they possibly could.

  When they reached the archway he turned and glanced around again. “Fascinating. I at least expected there to be an inner cadre left behind to protect the queen.”

  “There was,” Grace said. “This looks like what’s left of them.” She pointed through the arch toward the queen’s inner chamber.

  Thirty meters down the corridor were two bodies of large male aliens. The Professor moved quickly toward them. It looked as if they had been simply torn limb from limb. Their acid blood was dripping off the walls and pooling on the floor and he stepped carefully around it.

  “I think you’re right.” He moved to study one body at close range. “See the different cranial configuration, the oversize mandibles? This was the queen’s elite, her praetorian guard.”

  “Professor, over here. I have a trace.”

  Kleist spun away from the body. Grace was holding the sensor and facing down the corridor toward the queen’s chamber.

  “Is it the rogue?”

  Grace shook her head in confusion. “I don’t know. It might be. It’s a large signal, but the form keeps shifting. I can’t seem to get a lock on it. I can’t explain it.”

  The Professor started toward the queen’s chamber at a run, with Grace right behind him. He knew exactly what Grace was seeing, but he didn’t want to take the time at the moment to explain it to her. Instead he would just show her.

  The corridor suddenly widened into a huge chamber full of dripping slime formations and mounds of royal jelly, the new gold of mankind. The Professor halted just inside the queen’s chamber, his gun lowered.

  “Some things, Grace,” he said, pointing, “need no explanation. Isn’t this wonderful?”

  Alien secretions had completely altered the shape of the room, creating a massive confusion of dripping forms from what had once been human balconies, railings, and ceilings. In clusters around the room were the ball-like egg sacks protected over by the queen and her guards. But now many of those sacks were destroyed, scattered or smashed in brown and gold stains.

  Circling each other in the center of the room were the rogue and the queen. Both of an equal size, her maroon-colored skeletal frame and huge carapace contrasted with the metal black of the rogue. Massive amounts of saliva dripped from both their mouths and their second jaws extended and retracted like warning flags.

  They circled each other, the queen somehow avoiding the egg sacks while the rogue smashed everything without notice. They weren’t quite touching, but their front limbs were doing an intricate dance of position.

  Suddenly Grace’s hand went to the side of her head. “They’re screaming, Professor. Very intense, both of them.”

  “History is being made,” Kleist said, and as if on cue, the rogue leapt, twisting its huge frame around the knocking
the queen from her feet, biting hard on the back of the royal neck.

  Grace held her weapon at the ready, but the Professor just watched, smiling.

  He had no doubt who was going to win.

  No doubt at all.

  17

  “Gather around,” Sergeant Green said as the last of the men came through the grate. The narrow rock tunnel seemed almost warm with this many excited and sweating humans in it.

  He waited until everyone was still, then said, “I figure we don’t have much time until this entire base is overrun by the bugs. We got to round up every person we can, take care of some business, then get the hell out of here.”

  Joyce had never been so pleased to hear a sentence in her life. She wanted to applaud, and she could tell that many of the others around her felt the same.

  “We’re going to split up into three groups,” the sergeant continued. “All with assignments.”

  He turned to face Joyce. “Captain, I want you to take all the civilians and make your way to the hangar deck. Get your ship and any other shuttle or transport parked there ready to fly.”

  He turned to the rest of the civilians. “How many of you can pilot a shuttle?”

  Cray, Deegan, and Kent all indicated they could.

  Green nodded, satisfied, then turned back to Joyce. “You and your people’s job is to secure that hangar area and keep it secure for as long as you can. Understood?”

  It was Joyce’s turn to nod. She would have rather been going after the Professor and Larson, but she had a sneaking suspicion that special task was coming up for one of the Marine groups. In fact, she would bet just about anything that it would be Sergeant Green who would be taking care of it personally.

  “If you can’t hold the hangar area,” Green continued, “get your asses into that ship and get the hell away from here. Don’t wait for us, understand?”

  Again she nodded.

  “Good,” the sergeant said. “The rest of us are going to be rounding up everyone we can and sending them your way. When you get a full ship, lift it. You all clear on that, also? Anyone have any questions?”